I was looking for coverage of the hurricane hitting Hawaii and I saw an ad by my ‘Net provider that implied that rival ‘Net providers in the area don’t have telephone support, but my provider does.

Sorry, but the other major provider is The Phone Company, and they definitely provide telephone support to their Internet customers, usually via the landline telephone that you were required to have to get DSL. They have an annoying menu system that you work through, then customer service reps, and if you stay on the line you will get to talk to one of their system engineers who can trace the line back to your specific modem and test it. I’ve had them overnight a new modem because the modem I was originally given couldn’t handle all of the tests that they wanted to run. They had already fixed the issue I called about, but were doing an upgrade that worked better with the new modems.

What was missing from the cable company ad was the fact that the package they were hawking includes telephone service that requires an Internet connection. If the ‘Net connection is down, you don’t have telephone service to call telephone support.

As for the general complaint that most Internet centered businesses depend on the ‘Net to provide support, that is a very valid complaint and something I’ve personally encountered with modem and router companies. I make a point before installing new equipment of going to their support web site and grabbing the docs and software updates before connecting the equipment. These days the only documentation that comes with hardware is the URL of the company’s support site. The days of the linen covered three-ring binders that used to accompany all software and hardware are long since over.